Keith, you say that Mr. Howard lost the election and Mr. Rudd did not win. It was very clear that Mr. Rudd was very strategic, and out-manouvred the Coalition on several ocassions.
The Coalition lost contact with the electorate. Mr. Rudd by having his team visit schools to ascertain their IT needs indicates a refreshing approach of working with the community.

Mr. Rudd has been impressive so far in relation to getting on top of issues, Kyoto being an example.

Keith: "Today it was evidenced with his 'ordering' of 'his' MPs to visit 2 schools in their electorates and come ready to discuss his proposed ' Education Revolution'. That excludes the views of EVERY parent who lives in a Liberal, National or independant electorate..."

Er, Keith - and how exactly could Rudd prevail on non-Labor MPs to do anything?

The rest of your post makes more sense, but only as an expression of sour grapes.

Daggett, the way we measure unemployment, inflation etc, is AFAIK by internationally agreed standards. So all the points you raise are basically
irrelevant. Everyone leads different lives, some are more affected by this
or that then others. Some spend more on this, less on that. So they are
an overall, internationally agreed guide. By any measures, the figures
under 12 years of Costello look great and our economy is booming.

It seems to me that some people don’t want a Government, they want a
personal nanny :) The nanny state is a failure, I hope that we never
become one.

The current account is not the Governments problem, it’s the problem of
those who borrowed the money. Governments can introduce policies
to boost exports, which this Government did, through workchoices.
Some people rejected it, fine ok, so let the dollar crash eventually.
As an exporter I would be thrilled! Whatever I produce, I compete
globally. Some of you want your little deals to protect you. Ok, that
comes at a cost in terms of lost exports.

No I’m not concerned about resources running out. When they become
scarce, the price will go up and people will learn to value them
a bit more. If oil goes to 200$, so be it, we’ll learn to use it more wisely
then we do now.

Wiz, I’m glad that you call Costello “competent, if unimaginative”.
It’s a compliment! That’s exactly what we want from a treasurer.
We don’t want imaginative things like the Kehmlani affair,
The Burke Labour Govt, The Kirner Labour Govt, Jim Cairns
etc, peeing taxpayers money up against walls. We had enough
bad imagination and saw where that got us: huge Govt debts
which we had to cough up for.

Fact is right now Australians are richer then ever before, earn more
then ever before, the economy is booming and Costello left behind
a treasury full of money. How many other treasurers can you name
who achieved that?

http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,23636,22828388-462,00.html

Business, being better able to crunch the numbers, values him far more
highly then some electors do

Well the electorate of Leichhardt produced one of the biggest swings in the country and the local Liberal candidate was up against the labour grub that looks like he came straight from the cover of the Mad Magazine. Not only did her own party reject her as well but the majority of the Leichhardt electorate rejected her and her personal adviser and supporter, Stenchy a well known parasite on the community.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6617&page=0#98948
The Liberal Party candidate was involved in some very smelly conduct with Mr Stench in order to get preselected and a good majority of the members of the local Liberal Party will not be voting for her and many have resigned in protest. It would appear that her time in Ruddocks office had more to do with why she was to be the person who shall be preselected at what ever cost.
If she gets elected she will end up a smelly as Stenchy as he had worn out his welcome long ago and was lucky to survive the Petition commenced in the High Court that had his election in the last Federal election put to the test in the private hearing conducted by one of the not so honourable justices, who was actually appointed a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia, in his own private court sitting in persona designata jurisdiction.
The decisions and orders made in this sham Tribunal by the referee, who cloaked his work in the neutral colours of a judicial action in the Federal Court of Australia with the IMPLIED CONSENT of the Petitioner, did not have to be obeyed and have no legal force or effect and the show trial was conducted at the expense of Stenchy, who could not even defend himself as he had no defence, as no costs have been paid, as directed by Mr John Alfred DOWSETT, by the Petitioner who is now standing as an independent just to rub salt into the $15,000.00 wound.

Yabby wrote, "... the way we measure unemployment, inflation etc, is AFAIK by internationally agreed standards. ..."

As I showed before the indicators typically cited, in order to portray Costello as an economic genius towards whom we should all feel infinitely grateful, are questionable. Simply citing some non-specific international authority is no answer to the specific points made here and elsewhere.

Yabby wrote, "The current account is not the Government's problem, ..."

Perhaps some of us think it should be. Whatever, the current account is surely factor we should take into account when forming a judgement about Peter Costello's record.

Another factor of course is the ratio of foreign debt to annual GDP. According to a graph in a newsletter I received from economist Steve Keen (http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/) recently, it has climbed from roughly 82% in 1996 to 160% today.

Yabby wrote, "I'm not concerned about resources running out. When they become scarce, the price will go up and people will learn to value them a bit more. If oil goes to 200$(sic), so be it, we'll learn to use it more wisely then we do now."

Well, I would have thought that it would be far more prudent to begin using the resources wisely now in order to avoid having them run out if we possibly can.

Yabby, wrote "Fact is right now Australians are richer then ever before, earn more then ever before, the economy is booming and Costello left behind
a treasury full of money. ..."

You have already made that assertion. Simply restating an assertion, without properly acknowledging my response, is not the same as arguing a case.

"... How many other treasurers can you name who achieved that?"

As I showed earlier (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6685#100096 http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6682), a drover's dog could have 'achieved' that given the circumstances Costello found himself. If Costello had any brains and any concern for the future he would have invested some of that money, for example, in fixing up the Murray Darling basin or attending to a large number of other gravely serious environmental threats.

Yabby, economists and business leaders are generally very complimentary about Keating's reign as treasurer too, and he was anything but unimaginative. Indeed, without many of the reforms that he had the foresight and courage to implement, Australia's economy would be a poor shadow of what it is today.
While I agree governments can be overzealous and occasionally not particularly cautious about how to manage taxpayer funds, given the unique challenges we are to face in the 21st century, there is definitely room for a Treasurer to think more creatively about methods in which surplus funds can be redirected. For example, offshore investment funds to ensure the proceeds of our resources boom are not squaundered and we don't fall pray to "Dutch disease".
Yes, this raises the risk of mistakes, but timidity is no substitute for competency.